S9: Practical Anticipation: The Season of Advent

E4: Love Found a Way

This is my final blog about Advent as we approach Christmas Day where we traditionally celebrate the birth of Christ. The theme of Advent in this final week is love.

In the mid 20th century, a lady called Avid B. Christiansen wrote a poem that later became a hymn. You might not know it in this blog, but I guarantee you’ve heard it at some point. It is called, “Love Found a Way”.

I’d like to bring together one of my favorite authors – C. S. Lewis – using A. A. Milne’s sad donkey called Eeyore, and the stable where Christ was born. What, you might say, has Lewis, Milne’s donkey, and Jesus the Son of God have in common to show us that love found a way? Well, quite a bit. So, let’s start with C. S. Lewis.

The first book he published was called Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics (1919). One of the poems in that book is called The Nativity, in which, Lewis asks questions about a nameless donkey in the stable where Jesus was born. Among those questions is this verse:  

What are the thoughts that grope behind,
Down in the mist of a donkey mind?

Can it be true, as the wise men tell,
That you are a mask of God as well.

The poem ends with the donkey’s response, or more precisely, the lack of it:

But the ass had far too wise a head
To answer one of the things I said,

So, he twitched his fair ears up and down
And turned to nuzzle his shoulder brown.

If the donkey in Jesus’ stable was an inspiration for The Nativity poem, it appears this inventiveness stayed with him throughout his writing career. Throughout the Chronicles of Narnia, his letters and essays, reference to a donkey consistently emerges depicted as a creature that is slow to learn, but eventually gets there.

For example, in The Last Battle Lewis created a donkey called Puzzle who was rather dense, but he had a good heart and did what was right, eventually. A similar example is seen in The Horse and His Boy where Aslan turns Prince Rabadash into a rather dumb donkey.  Also, in one of his many letters to Sister Penelope, Lewis wrote, “I’m a sad ass at the moment” (1941). He was, of course, referring his own depiction of a donkey and probably to the Old Testament story of Balaam and his stubborn donkey.[1] In fact, throughout the Old Testament, a donkey can be summarized as a creature of service and suffering.

This negative image of a donkey was cast like a shadow over a variety of people in Scripture in just as many ways. For example, Cain was called a “wild donkey of a man” doomed to a life of hostility.[2] Issachar was likened to a “rawboned donkey” painting the picture of someone who takes the blows of predators to protect others.[3] Samson shouted, “With a donkey's jawbone I have made donkeys of them. With a donkey's jawbone I have killed a thousand men” (Judges 15:16). So, even the death a donkey is used as an insult. And, wouldn’t you know it, Jeremiah passed judgment on Jehoiakim, King of Judah, that he would have a burial of a donkey.[4] Unflattering to say the least. Scripture paints the picture of a hostile, beaten, and mocked animal whose end is just as miserable.

At this point, what comes to my mind (for me) is nothing more or less than A. A. Milne’s creation of Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh. My eldest son loved watching the animation of this delightful story when he was a little boy. He would laugh when the ever-glum and pessimistic donkey called Eeyore lost his tail attached to his bottom because the nail kept falling out. Even in his request for help, Eeyore was slow-talking and slow-moving while repeating the sarcastic phrase, “Thanks for noticing.” He was profoundly reluctant to go on any type of adventure with his friends because it was, in his view, completely futile.       

This is the image I see when Lewis writes:

Among the asses (stubborn I as they),

I see my Savior where I looked for hay.

I find this fascinating. Lewis was an extraordinary author with the ability to write eloquently in a number of literary genres. He held academic positions in Oxford and Cambridge. Most of all, he was a remarkable apologist, or as some would say, a lay theologian. And yet, he numbers himself, as I imagine it, with Eeyore the dense donkey in the stable where Jesus was born. Slow to learn, stubborn in his ways, not easily moved, like a “sad ass” (1941).

As much as this fascinates me, I am in awe of what happened about 33 years after the stable scene, or The Nativity. While approaching Jerusalem, Jesus asked two of his disciples to fetch a donkey that had never been ridden before, or more precisely, a colt.[5] In short, Jesus was not only asking for a dense donkey as his mode of transportation, but one that had not been trained in service and suffering yet.

What he was asking for was a dense and unpredictable donkey to publicly ride into Jerusalem to fulfill what Zechariah prophesied about 619 years before. “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem. See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9).

I must come back to the simple lines of Lewis:

Among the asses (stubborn I as they),

I see my Savior where I looked for hay.

While looking for hay, the donkey sees the Savior. Lewis says, “Just like me”. In these simple lines, we see true humility. We also see essential theology. Did we really find Jesus the Savior, like so many hymns suggest, or did he find us while we were about our day? I suggest that the prophets of the Old Testament, the writers of the Gospels, all of Paul’s epistles, and the other epistles, collectively witness to the latter.  

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Apparently, Lewis understood that he could not boast in finding the Savior, any more than a donkey in a stable, or Eeyore as I’m calling him. Love really does find a way. While our focus is on our own needs (like a donkey needing hay) we stumble across the Savior. Christ finds a way to reveal himself to us.  

Like previous weeks, I will offer a personal liturgy as opposed to a group setting. It requires a time set aside from distraction and noise. You will need a Bible, a hymn book (or a browser), a notepad and something to write with. So, on a daily basis through Advent from Sunday December 19 through Saturday December 25:

1.     Offer an invocation. This is an opening prayer of thanksgiving to God for the hope we have. It also acknowledges the presence of God is with you.

2.     Read Scripture out loud so you can hear your own voice.

a.     Sunday Isaiah 7:10-17; Romans 1:1-7; Psalm 24; Matthew 1:18-25

b.     Monday Psalm 77

c.     Tuesday Luke 1:26-38

d.     Wednesday Isaiah 40:1-11, 28-31

e.     Thursday Ezekiel 34:11-16

f.      Friday Isaiah 9:1-7

g.     Saturday Philippians 4:4-8

3.     After you have read Scripture for that day, write your thoughts down. Try not to overthink this. Simply react to what the Scripture has been saying to you.

4.     Pray for the church the Body of Christ, for others, and for yourself.

5.     Read the hymn out loud so you can hear your own voice, “O Little Town of Bethlehem”

6.     Take a moment to pause and consider what you have done: Scripture, prayer, writing a few thoughts, reading a hymn.

7.     Offer a benediction. This is a closing prayer asking for God’s guidance.  

You see, not only do we see the lowliest animal in the stable, we see him with Jesus entering Jerusalem. Look beyond the hay and see the Savior in this fourth week of Advent.

[1] Book of Numbers chapter 22.

[2] Genesis 16:12.

[3] Genesis 49:14.

[4] Jeremiah 22:19.

[5] Mark 11:1-11.